


hours in an underwater cave together turns sort of enemies ----> best bros

by heroofhermes



Series: Frank & Leo [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Bonding, Brotp, Enemies to Friends, Friendship, Gen, If You Squint - Freeform, Insecure Leo Valdez, M/M, Male Friendship, Pre-Relationship, can be read as romantic if you want, frank and leo could've been the best of friends, fuck it the series starts platonic ends romantic good day everyone, good job me, i love them so much i might cry, i need to stop writing this I'm going to ship them hhhhh, i saw an opportunity and i took it, i was mad this fanfic didnt exist so i made it myself, i would die for these characters, i'm writing these tags as i write the story, maybe i should just write a whole series on their friendship, maybe it does exist but i will make it anyways, not really enemies but yeah, oh my god i really just added that tag, okay I'll write some romantic ones and some platonic ones, omg i went from brotp to otp real quick um anyways so, omg no i ship frank and leo now help me oh gods, there is so little frank and leo fanfics, they're so cute like take my soul, um enjoy the story ig i loved writing it i love them so much, um hi i'm having a breakdown in tags sifsh7e, why this is the thing keeping me sane, yes i suppose i will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:21:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26320321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heroofhermes/pseuds/heroofhermes
Summary: Leo and Frank spend many hours in the underwater jail waiting to be let out by the ichthyocentaurs, and in that time they realize they are more similar than they thought, and quickly become the best of friends.
Relationships: Leo Valdez & Frank Zhang, Leo Valdez/Frank Zhang
Series: Frank & Leo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1912480
Comments: 5
Kudos: 50





	hours in an underwater cave together turns sort of enemies ----> best bros

**Author's Note:**

> I will die with this as my otp. I will stand by Frank and Leo having the best friendship or romantic relationship and I WILL make a series of them having many shenanigans. I'm better at staying connected to one shots rather than series so my other fanfics will probably take a while to update, sorry :(( I'm going to take them down and rewrite them as very long one-shots.
> 
> SOME OF THE EARLIER SENTENCES ARE STOLEN FROM THE BOOK HHHH I'M SORRY :((( IT'S MOSTLY ORIGINAL THOUGH :DD

When Leo woke up, he wondered if he was in a flashback again. It felt like he was floating weightlessly. Or maybe he was a ghost, and shrimpzilla really had killed him. Leo Valdez, hero of Olympus, one of the seven, killed by a massive shrimp.

“About time.” Frank’s voice sounded strange in a way Leo could only describe as having multiple layers of plastic over his mouth.

Leo opened his eyes, sitting up - or rather drifted upright. He was floating in an underwater sort of cave, about the size of a garage for two cars. The moss on the ceiling gave the room a blue-green glow and the floor was a carpet of sea urchins, which Leo would never want to step on, so he was glad he was floating. He looked over at Frank, who was floating in a mediation pose. With his chubby face and grumpy expression, he looked like a Buddha who had achieved enlightenment and wasn't pleased about it. He didn't understand how they were both breathing while underwater. There was just one exit to the cave, blocked by a huge curved shell, glistening in all types of pretty colors like rose, turquoise and seemed more like a pretty home than a prison. Most of the points were for the beautiful shell door.

“Where are we?” Leo asked. “Where is everyone else?”

“Everyone?” Frank grumbled. “I don’t know. As far as I can tell, it’s just you and me and Hazel down here. The fish-horse guys took Hazel about an hour ago, leaving me with you.”

Frank sounded like he wasn't too happy with that. He didn't seem to be injured, but his bow and arrows were missing. In a panic, Leo patted his waist only to feel his tool belt wasn't there.

“They searched us,” Frank said. “Took anything that could be a weapon.”

“Who?” Leo demanded. “Who are these fish-horse—?”

“Fish-horse guys,” Frank clarified, which didn't help much. “They must have grabbed us when we fell in the ocean and dragged us here.... wherever here is.”

Leo thought hard, remembering just what had happened before he had blacked out. A lima-green-colored face of a bearded man with a dagger pointing at him. “The shrimp monster. The Argo II—is the ship okay?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said darkly. “The others might be in trouble or hurt, or—or worse. But I guess you care more about your ship than your friends.”

Leo felt like his face had just hit the water again. “What kind of stupid thing—?” Then he realized why Frank was so angry. 'Maybe if you hadn’t been staring into Hazel’s eyes, holding hands for so long—' - Of course, Coach Hedge just had to word it that way. It also didn't help that right after that and before he could explain, Frank was thrown overboard. All of a sudden, Leo couldn't look at Frank in the eyes.

“Look, man…I’m sorry I got us into this mess. I totally jacked things up.” He took a deep breath, which felt surprisingly normal, considering he was underwater. “Me and Hazel holding hands…it’s not what you think. She was showing me this flashback from her past, trying to figure out my connection with Sammy.”

Frank’s angry expression started to unknot, replaced by curiosity. “Did she…did you figure it out?”

“Yeah,” Leo said. “Well, sort of. We didn’t get a chance to talk about it afterward because of Shrimpzilla, but Sammy was my great-grandfather.” Leo told Frank about what he had seen in the flashback - Sammy, his great grandfather, had had a sort of thing going on with Hazel in the 1940's. He had picked up one of Hazel's cursed jewels, and believed that to be the reason he never got to see her again. It was weird to think that, If Hazel had stayed in the 1940's, Leo might have been her great grandson, which Leo found weird to think about. So, it turns out that not only had Hera, his Tia Callida, shaped his childhood, but she'd also been shaping how his life would turn out before he was even born.

“Oh, man,” Leo said when he had finished the story. “I don’t feel so good. But I swear on the Styx, that’s what we saw.”

Frank had the same expression as the monster catfish head—wide glassy eyes and an open mouth. “Hazel…Hazel liked your great-grandfather? That’s why she likes you?”

“Frank, I know this is weird. Believe me. But I don’t like Hazel—not that way. I’m not moving in on your girl.”

Frank knit his eyebrows. “No?”

Leo hoped he wasn’t blushing. Truthfully, he had no idea how he felt about Hazel. She was awesome and cute, and Leo had a weakness for awesome cute girls. But the flashback had complicated his feelings a lot. Besides, his ship was in trouble.

I guess you care more about your ship than your friends, Frank had said.

It wasn't true, right? Leo's godly parent, Hephaestus, had admitted to him that he was much better with machines rather than organic life forms. Yeah, Leo had always felt way more comfortable with machines rather than actual people, but his friends were important to him too, even Frank. They were like family to him, he thought. The problem was, it had been so long since he had a family he could hardly remember what having one felt like. And yeah, last winter he'd become senior counselor for his cabin, but were they really a family? He hardly had gotten to know them, rather spending his entire time back at camp building the Argo II, getting little sleep and ended up missing out on meals or falling asleep after a few days of constant work. If he did have a family, it was the other demigods on the ship, including Coach Hedge, but he wouldn't admit that to him, or anyone else for that matter.

You will always be the outsider, warned Nemesis’s voice; but Leo tried to push that thought aside.

“Right, so…” He looked around him. “We need to make a plan. How are we breathing? If we’re under the ocean, shouldn’t we be crushed by the water pressure?”

Frank shrugged. “Fish-horse magic, I guess. I remember the green guy touching my head with the point of a dagger. Then I could breathe.”

Leo studied the door. “Can you bust us out? Turn into a hammerhead shark or something?”

Frank shook his head glumly. “My shape-shifting doesn’t work. I don’t know why. Maybe they cursed me, or maybe I’m too messed up to focus.”

“Hazel could be in trouble,” Leo said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

He swam to the door and ran his fingers along the abalone. He couldn’t feel any kind of latch or other mechanism. Either the door could only be opened by magic or sheer force was required—neither of which was Leo’s specialty. “I’ve already tried,” Frank said. “Even if we get out, we have no weapons.”

“Hmm…” Leo held up his hand. “I wonder.” He concentrated, and fire flickered over his fingers. For a split second, Leo was excited, because he hadn’t expected it to work underwater. Then his plan started working a little too well. Fire raced up his arm and over his body until he was completely shrouded in a thin veil of flame. He tried to breathe, but he was inhaling pure heat.

“Leo!” Frank flailed backward like he was falling off a bar stool. Instead of racing to Leo’s aid, he hugged the wall to get as far away as possible.

Leo forced himself to stay calm. He understood what was going on. The fire itself couldn’t hurt him. But, the smoke was overwhelming him. Although the flame was small enough, he hadn't felt this much power in his fire since he had burned down his house along with his mother inside of it. He tried to calm himself down, willing the flames to do so and counting to five. He took a shallow breath. He had oxygen again.

Frank stopped trying to merge with the cave wall. “You’re…you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” Leo grumbled. “Thanks for the assist.”

“I—I’m sorry.” Frank looked so horrified and ashamed it was hard for Leo to stay mad at him. “I just…what happened?”

“Clever magic,” Leo said. “There’s a thin layer of oxygen around us, like an extra skin. Must be self-regenerating. That’s how we’re breathing and staying dry. The oxygen gave  
the fire fuel—except the fire also suffocated me.”

“I really don’t…” Frank gulped. “I don’t like that fire summoning you do.” He started getting cozy with the wall again.

Leo didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t help laughing. “Man, I’m not going to attack you.”

“Fire,” Frank repeated, like that one word explained everything.

Leo remembered what Hazel had said—that his fire made Frank nervous. He’d seen the discomfort in Frank’s face before, but Leo hadn’t taken it seriously. Frank seemed way more powerful and scary than Leo was. Now it occurred to him that Frank might have had a bad experience with fire. Leo’s own mom had died in a machine shop blaze. Leo had been blamed for it. He’d grown up being called a freak, an arsonist, because whenever he got angry, things burned.

“Sorry I laughed,” he said, and he meant it. “My mom died in a fire. I understand being afraid of it. Did, uh…did something like that happen with you?”

Frank seemed to be weighing how much to say. “My house…my grandmother’s place. It burned down. But it’s more than that…” He stared at the sea urchins on the floor. “Annabeth said I could trust the crew. Even you.”

“Even me, huh?” Leo wondered how that had come up in conversation. “Wow, high praise.”

“My weakness…” Frank started, like the words cut his mouth. “There’s this piece of firewood I have. It's... A sort of Achilles heel."

"The firewood? No offense, but, how does that work?"

"Have you ever heard of that Greek myth? The one about Meleager?" Frank fiddled with his hands, the water bubbling around them.

Leo wracked his brains trying to remember the myth. The name was familiar, and there was something about it that he could almost place his finger on. When he finally remembered the myth, his eyes widened. "The dude with a firewood attached to his life?" Leo realized that might be insensitive, and for a moment felt bad about all of the times he had insulted Frank. For starters, the guy made him nervous. He could shapeshift into any animal - a dragon, an elephant, and turning into animals wasn't only the limit. He could be anything he wanted to be - he wanted to be a good archer, he became a good archer. Leo admitted to himself that at first he had been jealous of Frank, because he had Hazel. But like he had said earlier, the flashback had really changed his view, so now the jealousy part was gone, but Frank still made him really nervous. "So... you have the same curse as him?"

Frank nodded, looking slightly relieved. Leo couldn't imagine the constant feeling knowing your life is tied to a piece of firewood, that it could burn or break at any moment. "Do you have the piece of wood in your pocket or something? How have you been able to keep it so long?" 

Frank gulped, before placing his hand on his pocket. "Not anymore. It used to be in my pocket, for a long time, but now Hazel has it. It's in this bag that protects it, but I almost burned it out completely freeing Thanatos from his chains." 

"Thanatos? The god of death? Why would you use your firewood for that?" If Leo had a firewood tied to his life, he couldn't imagine using it up like that, especially when he could almost die. "Couldn't you have just used a different piece of wood?"

"It had to be my life source. The part of the wood I have left is really tiny now." 

"Oh. Well, at least you survived." Leo wondered if he would have been brave enough to use his life source to free a quest and very likely end up killing him. He realized that his reason for taking that chance wouldn't have been much to do with bravery, but he pushed that thought aside.

"You, uh, mentioned your mom died?" Frank asked awkwardly, and Leo just nodded, looking at the way the moss grew on the ceiling of the cell, not wanting to think about his mom. When he was eight years old, Gaea had visited him, before she was even entirely awake. She had tricked him into using fire, and then disappeared, leaving the fire to spread through the house, with his mother trapped inside. His fire. His friends (The ones who were aware of his accidental murder) often reminded him it wasn't his fault. He told them he agreed with them, but inside, deep down, he knew it was his fault. He should have kept control. Since then, he had ran away from multiple foster homes, including one abusive home that thinking about it sometimes made him even more scared than he was of a monster. He was only eleven years old back then, and he still had a scar on his leg. It was small and hardly noticeable, but it was there. Then he'd ended up at Wilderness school, met Piper and Jason, and his life as a half blood began. 

"You know, you might've heard already, but my mom died recently at war." Frank winced as he said it.

"What was she like?" Leo asked. He knew how it felt having a dead mom. He couldn't speak for everyone with a dead parent, but he hated the constant "I'm sorry" when he told people about it. 

Frank seemed a bit surprised at the question, but the corner of his lips turned up into a sad smile. "She was amazing - she wanted what was best for me, she was really brave. She was really protective of me and encouraged me to do my best. She died out at war." His tone of voice sounded wistful.

"She sounds like an amazing mother." Leo commented, thinking about his own mother, and how she also wanted the best for him. He still missed her, an awful lot, but he was thankful for the time he had with her.

"Yeah, she was." Frank said. "If you don't mind me asking, what was your mother like?"

"Oh, she was the best. She was a mechanic, but she never got any good job in the field, probably because she was a woman." Leo said the last part sort of spitefully, because his mother Esperanza was an amazing mechanic and amazing person. She deserved so much more. "I got most of my jokes off of her. She was so happy all of the time, and always knew the perfect things to say." Leo was thankful for being underwater, because he might have shed a tear if he had been on land.

Frank nodded awkwardly. "She seems great."

Leo nodded, thinking of something to change the subject. "Geez, it's taking this long to interrogate her?"

"We don't even know if she's just being interrogated. These guys could be monsters." 

Leo tapped his fingers against his side, wishing he had his toolbelt, or even just something he could fiddle around with in his hands. "They could have just let us drown if they were monsters. I'm sure Hazel will be fine." 

"I hope so."

"Hey, Frank?" Leo asked, which got Frank to look at him, mumbling out a 'Hmm?'. "I'm sorry for, you know, all my jokes. They can go a bit too far sometimes. It's just a sort of defense mechanism. You make me kind of nervous."

Frank opened his mouth slightly and his eyes widened. "I make YOU nervous? How?" 

"Well, for a start, you can become anything you want. You could just turn into an elephant and step on me, and then I'd be waiting in the waiting line of the underworld. Plus, you're like, 6'5. You don't even have to turn into an elephant to crush me." 

"If anything, you're the one making me nervous. You have a power that could easily burn up my life source. And.. yeah, your jokes can go a bit too far sometimes. Like the one about how much I'm worth." 

Leo looked away from him after that, ashamed he had even made the joke. It wasn't even funny. "Yeah, sorry about that. If anything, you're the one worth about ten of me." 

Frank frowned. "What do you mean?" 

"You know, like I said. You can turn into any animal you want, have any talent you want, you're an amazing fighter, you're really brave. All I have is fire that I can't even have control of sometimes, and a flaming hammer that doesn't really do much. And I'm sort of the reason why the Romans are after us." When Leo finished what he was saying, he looked back up to Frank, who was glaring at him.

"Are you kidding me? You're one of the most powerful people on the ship!" He said, seemingly shocked Leo had even said what he had just said, although Leo wasn't sure why.

"That title belongs to Percy and Jason. Have you seen what they can do?"

"Yeah, obviously. And have you seen what YOU can do? Leonidas Valdez—" 

"Hey, it's Leo. When did you even find out my first name?" Leo complained. Frank looked at him, unimpressed. "I'm not finished, don't interrupt me." 

"Valdez, first of all, the Romans being after us isn't your fault. It was the eidolons, remember? You had no control over what they could do. And, since you know Percy and Jason are so powerful, even they couldn't fight them off. Second of all, you're the only one who knows how to control the ship properly. If we didn't have you, we would have no idea how to get anywhere, where to find any of the supplies. Not to mention, you're the one who does all the repairs to the ship, the ship would be useless if it wasn't for you fixing it every time we need it fixed. Also, don't you dare say you aren't powerful. You can create fire so strong, and I've never seen you lose control of it. Your fire is just as powerful as Percy's water and Jason's lightning." By the time Frank finished, Leo was just staring at him in shock.

"I thought you hated me?" He said, unsure of what else to say.

"As much as I dislike you, and as nervous as you make me, you're needed on this quest. We would be nothing without all of us. Even though you aren't exactly my favourite person, I admire you. You're a good fighter and even though your jokes can be mean, you're the person keeping everyone laughing on the quest. Everything would be so serious and dull without you." Frank continued, and Leo had no idea what to do. Part of him wanted to cry, because somebody really thought of him like that, and the fact that even the person he thought hated him was the one making him feel the most wanted, he just wanted to tackle hug him. Leo thought that was weird, they weren't that close, so he ended up just smiling.

"I never really thought of it like that. Thanks, dude." He smiled at Frank. "You're actually a pretty cool guy."

Frank smiled back at him. "There's no need to thank me." Leo thought it was nice to see Frank's smile.

"I wonder how long they're going to take. This is taking way too long, I don't even have any pipe-cleaner to play around with." Leo groaned in annoyance, tapping a tune to a random song. "It's taking longer than when the hosts of Eurovision pause before announcing the points."

"They take way too long, I just want to know who's gonna win" Frank agreed, and Leo looked at him in surprise.

"You watch the eurovision?" Leo asked, and Frank nodded. "Oh, I've just never met anybody else living in America watching it. My and my mom watched it every year. I still watch it every year, just without her." He smiled, thinking about all the times they had sat on the couch together eating dinner and cheering for their favorite songs.

"I've met a few. It's a shame technology on demigods can be tracked easily." 

Leo frowned. "I never thought about that.. Stupid monsters."

"Yeah," Frank agreed.

Hours seemed like only minutes as Leo and Frank talked about every little thing they could. The conversation was seamless, and it all felt natural. They ended up laughing for most of it, bonding over many of their shared interests and joking around, telling each other stories from their past. Talking to Frank was easy, and Leo felt the happiest he had in a while. Another hour later, the weird guys came in to interrogate them. Leo waved to Frank, smiling at him with a bit of laughter still inside of him as they went with their respective fish centaurs.

**Author's Note:**

> thank
> 
> I hope you enjoyed I will feed as much Frank and Leo as I can to you
> 
> I started this fanfiction as a friendship fanfiction and it ended up me having fraleo as my otp hi I'm a fool


End file.
